The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn
by GodsGirl7
Summary: Based entirely on the movie Moulin Rouge. Syaoran is a penniless writer and Sakura is a courtesan for the Moulin Rouge, a night club in 1899 Paris. Will love prevail against all odds?
1. Default Chapter

A/N For those of you who have read my other fics, I'm sorry for not finishing The Journey! I just never felt inspired to write it anymore, and that being the case, it would've sucked if I tried. But then I had this idea, and I had to do it, so I hope you like it! Oh, and FYI, I reuploaded this chapter, cuz I changed it a little bit to try to make it a bit more different from the movie.  
  
Disclaimer: You already know I don't own CCS. I just wanted to mention that I don't own this storyline either. It is based entirely on the excellent movie, Moulin Rouge, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. If you haven't seen it, go rent it right now!!!  
  
Prologue: There Was A Boy  
  
Kazuhiro, a village just outside Tokyo, was a beautiful place, once, but now, in the year 1900, it is drab, lifeless. Everyone you meet looks depressed, as if all happiness has been sucked out of them. People once filled with joy are now filled with alcohol instead, and music no longer echoes throughout the streets. You can hardly stand to look at the people. You can see that they were happy, once, but now they seem hardly to have the will to live, and seeing them depresses even you.  
  
Life is especially dismal for one young man by the name of Syaoran Li. He sits on the floor in his apartment, dressed rather shabbily in an undershirt, pants, and suspenders, his face unshaven, and a bottle dangling loosely in one hand. He is haunted by memories that he cannot escape, memories of his lost happiness. He has been in this state for an entire year. But now, on a not so very special day, he drags himself to his typewriter. He stares at it for a moment, as if he has not seen such an object in some time. Finally, his fingers move to the keys and begin to type, slowly, the words etched deeply into his memory, their truth far greater than the simple letters on the page could possibly portray. Syaoran knows this, and that is why he must tell his story. He made a promise, and now, finally, he is strong enough to keep it. Even so, he is holding back sobs as he hits one letter at a time.  
  
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.  
  
A/N: Okay, I know that was short, but it's just the intro. If you've seen the movie before, you understand. This is gonna be kinda hard, since I obviously can't use the songs the same way as they're done in the movie (in case you didn't know, it's a musical). But heck, I think I might start working on the first chapter right now! So review, tell me what you think! 


	2. The Shonen no Neko

A/N: First off, I'm just gonna say that school starts for me on Monday, and I don't know how often I'll be updating after that, so please don't get mad at me! I'm gonna use the names of the CCS characters randomly, along with other random names. EVERYONE is gonna be OOC here, because of the fact that they are based on the characters from the movie. (Sorry to whoever it was who didn't want Sakura to be Satine- it wouldn't be an S+S fic if she wasn't.) Oh, and I changed the prologue a little tiny bit, so you can reread it if you want. Alright! On with the story!  
  
Chapter One: The Shonen no Neko  
  
I arrived here in Paris one year ago. I was idealistic at the time, having heard so much about the Ai no Revolution, or Revolution of Love, in Japan. China seemed so dull, and this Ai no Revolution so inviting for a writer such as myself, that I could not help but take part in it. Against my mother's wishes, I took a train to Tokyo. I knew I would be living a penniless existence, but it mattered not to me. From my small, rather trashy apartment overlooking the infamous club called the Shonen no Neko, I could write about truth, beauty, freedom, and that which I believed in above all things, love.  
Unfortunately, I'd never been in love to be able to write about it.  
Luckily, right at that moment, as I was sitting at my typewriter, an unconscious Asian man fell through my flimsy excuse for a roof. He was quickly followed by a dwarf dressed as a blonde woman, wearing a red dress far too long for someone who could not have been taller than five feet, who introduced himself as Eriol.  
I was so confused by this point that I was not surprised to see three more men looking down at me through a hole in the roof. One of them said, "Oh, wonderful. Now that the narcoleptic Asian is unconscious, we won't be able to finish the scene to present to the financier tomorrow."  
"Don't worry so much, Rene, we can just find someone to read the part," Eriol said with a cheerful smile.  
"Someone to read the part!" the man called Rene practically shouted. "Where on Earth are we going to find someone to play the part of the lovestruck American vagabond?"  
I blinked at this description of the part, then, before I knew it, I was upstairs in their cramped apartment, which filled with the backdrop of mountains for their scene, a piano, lights, and a wide array of strange objects I could not identify randomly placed around the room. I had somehow been talked into standing in for the unconscious Asian. I soon figured out that Rene was the writer of this play, called The Power of Love (highly unoriginal, I thought, but I kept my opinion to myself), and Eriol's woman outfit was his costume, as he was apparently the lead actor, at least for the presentation for the next day.  
However, I also began to see problems. All four men seemed to be struggling to come up with words for the song for this particular scene. Rene visibly cringed as Eriol melodramatically sang, "There is no hill sufficiently elevated, or any ravine sufficiently deep," as electric bulbs flashed all around and Yusuke, the pianist, banged out some rather strange- sounding notes.  
"Stop, stop, stop!" Rene yelled. "This is horrible! The music, it's awful! Through all this noise, I can't even think to come up with any words."  
Katsuya, the other man involved in the play, suggested, "What about if we say, There are no mountains of sufficient height-"  
"No!" Rene shouted again, but the room suddenly became full of noise.  
"There are no natural structures tall enough-"  
"There aren't any mountains that reach to a decent height-"  
"There are not-"  
As inspiration struck me, I tried to butt in, but could not, through the increasingly terrible mass of suggestions. When I could take it no more, I burst into sudden song.  
"Ain't no mountain high enough..."  
The room was suddenly silent as everyone stared at me. Suddenly, Koji, the unconscious Asian, woke up. "Ain't no mountain high enough... I LOVE IT!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet.  
I smiled to myself and sang the next line that came to me. "Ain't no valley low enough..."  
Everyone cheered as I smiled, pleased with myself. "You're a genius!" Eriol exclaimed, his bright blue eyes sparkling. "You and Rene should write the show together!"  
Rene, who had already had quite enough of the insanity of this play, took this as his cue to leave.  
I stood there, surrounded by Eriol, Yusuke, Katsuya, and Koji. "You must be the writer for our play!" Eriol exclaimed. "Will you, please?"  
"I- I don't know if I can," I stammered, suddenly imagining my father's disapproving voice in my head. "I mean, a play for the Shonen no Neko- I've never done anything like this before- I'm not sure if I'm even a true Ai no Revolutionary-"  
"What?!" all four men exclaimed at once.  
"Do you believe in beauty?" asked Eriol.  
"Yes," I replied cautiously.  
"Freedom?" asked Katsuya.  
"Yes, of course."  
"Truth?" asked Koji, the narcoleptic Asian.  
"Yes."  
"Love?" asked Yusuke.  
"Love?" I said softly. All for men stared at me apprehensively. "Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many- splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love!"  
"You can't fool us!" exclaimed Eriol. "You're the voice of the Ai no Revolution! You are a true Ai no Revolutionary!"  
"But," I asked nervously, running my hand through my messy brown hair, "how is all this going to work out? How are you going to convince your financier to let me write the play? I have no writing experience at all!"  
Eriol smiled. "I have an idea."  
He then told me about Sakura, the beautiful courtesan, the star of the Shonen no Neko. She apparently had a significant say in all that went on there. Eriol would have me borrow a suit from Koji, who was about the same size as me, and sneak me in past Fujitaka, the man who ran the Shonen no Neko. He would arrange a private meeting for me and Sakura, passing me off as a famous Chinese writer. I would then demonstrate my poetic abilities to her, and she would be so impressed by my skills that she would convince Fujitaka to let me write The Power of Love.  
Eriol grinned up at me, casually brushing back his deep black, almost bluish, hair (having taken off the ridiculous wig), looking entirely confident in his plan.  
I wish I could have felt so confident, but it all sounded like foolish insanity to me.  
  
************************************************************************  
  
That very night, I walked into the Shonen no Neko for the first time.  
It was unlike anything I had seen before. It was filled with bright lights, bright colors, and bright smiles of the dozens of beautiful women there. They danced energetically with the roomful of men. They, I could tell, were all rich. They all wore fine suits and even seemed to be paying some of the dancers. The music was so loud, I could hardly hear Eriol next to me. "Over there, that's Fujitaka. Don't let him see us, he'll know I'm up to something, and I don't want him to find out what we're doing until we have Sakura convinced that you should write the show."  
I nodded nervously as we made our way through the crowd. I edged around many of the women, all wearing massive amounts of makeup and brightly colored dresses that were low-cut on top and had huge skirts that they held up while they danced. Many of the dances seemed to be traditional, I noticed, but with a new style mixed into it. It was all so flashy, and so different from my tastes, that I almost told Eriol that I wanted to leave.  
However, we had hardly reached our table at the far side of the dance hall when something happened to change my mind.  
Everything suddenly became quiet as the room went dark except for a single spotlight. The light shone on the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, sitting on a swing high above the crowd. I vaguely wondered how she had gotten up there. But I could not tear my eyes away from her to see where the swing was attached. She had the most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen, beautiful auburn hair that fell just a few inches past her shoulders, and, I soon realized, a gorgeous singing voice.  
"That's Sakura," Eriol whispered to me as she began to sing softly a song I had never heard before. I could not focus on the words, my mind was so numb, I only remembered hearing something about how love was nice, but money was the only thing that keeps us alive. No one in the hall seemed to care about the message of the song any more than I did; Sakura had gotten off the swing and was stalking around, the spotlight following her as she flirted with the men that thronged about her.  
Eriol leaned over to me in the middle of the song, which irritated me, but I forced myself to listen. "I have arranged a meeting between you and Sakura after this song. You will be totally alone, so that you can share your poetic abilities with her." He grinned at me, rather mischievously, I thought.  
"Alone?" I gasped, gaping at Eriol. He nodded, then trotted off, saying that he was going to remind her of the meeting. I wondered how she would be able to hear a word he said in all the noise, with all these people around.  
I did not know at the time, but later I found out that while all this was going on, Fujitaka, the man who ran the Shonen no Neko, was talking to a young nobleman who was to be the financier for The Power of Love. Fujitaka was telling the nobleman a bit about the play, then told him in a low voice, "I have arranged a meeting between you and Sakura after her number. Totally alone."  
As Sakura's number drew to a close, she returned to her swing, out of reach of all the men below. As she reached the song's final note, she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. I could see her gasp as everyone waited expectantly for her grand finale of the song. But she never finished. At that moment, I saw her sway, then fall from the swing, unconscious, from a height of at least forty feet.  
  
A/N: Yup, a cliffhanger! Although it's be a really lame story if she died already, wouldn't it? Sorry if this is too much like the movie, I'm trying really hard to make it different. I changed all the names, so if the names sound stupid... sorry! If anyone has better ideas than my lame ones, I might change the names. So suggest away! And please, review! And feel free to e-mail or IM me. Thanks! 


End file.
